Adult Volunteers

Being a Youth Ministry volunteer has three qualifications:

Are you passionate about your faith?

Are you passionate about youth? meaning: you accept them as they come; you’re not complaining about “today’s youth,” their music, lifestyle, values, etc.; and you love youth and are able to connect with them.

Keep clearly in mind our goal is that every young person should have the opportunity to see and hear God’s love for him in Christ through what we do and say. We must seek to be led by the Holy Spirit. It is important to remember that we are representing Christ before kids. To spend quality time with all sorts of kids and interest groups is good. The example is worth 1,000 words.

We ask adult volunteers to “Provide a wholesome example in conduct and prayer life.” Adult volunteers need to be spiritually healthy in order for us to provide a spiritually rich environment for our youth. In other words … you can’t give away what you don’t have. As a staff providing such an important part of spiritual formation to our youth, we expect that our adult volunteers are ‘regularly attending’ some form of corporate worship in our tradition, and are being regularly fed by the Sacraments of the Church. We ask that at a minimum, all adult volunteers be Communicants in Good Standing at their home parish.

To be a Communicant in Good Standing, one must be a baptized member, must have received Holy Communion in their church at least three times during the previous year (See Canon I.17.2a), and “who for the previous year have been faithful in corporate worship, unless for good cause prevented, and have been faithful in working, praying and giving for the spread of the Kingdom of God.” (See Canon I.17.3)

EDOK Youth Ministry TrainingThe Youth Ministry program has a standard set of training materials. If you’ve never staffed an event before, we ask that you watch these three videos prior to coming to the event.

Video #1: Includes Guiding Principles, Qualifications, Youth Needs, and What you Need to do as an Adult Volunteer: Build Relationships, Be Welcoming, Supervise, Lead by Example, Be an adult not a kid, Have a positive attitude … and several things to avoid! (14:50)

Once every six years you will need to be certified in Safeguarding God’s Children. In-person classes are offered throughout the diocese each year, or you can request to take the online course. To get signed up for the online course, just send an e-mail to the Youth Missioner, Karen Schlabach, at kschlabach@episcopal-ks.org with your name, parish, date of birth, and e-mail address.

In order to volunteer overnight at diocesan youth events, once every five years, you will need to pass a background check and sexual offender registry check. The Youth Missioner will send you an e-mail with instructions on how to provide your information and consent for the background check to be done.

While we do need you to officially register for each youth event and sign the same community covenant the youth sign, adults never have to pay to attend youth events. We want to honor the gift of your time and all the hard work we expect from you when you help at a youth event. If you feel called to contribute towards the costs of youth events, you can make a tax deductible donation to “Youth Camp Scholarships” here.